630 HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



philosophy, they say, are not only intertwined with each other, are 

 not only akin to each other, but are in the last resort identical. The 

 considerations leading to this hypothesis are as follows: Religion 

 exhibits the relation between man and the Absolute, and a knowledge 

 of the Absolute is that to which our intellectual efforts are directed. 

 In the lower stages of religion, however, this relation is at best only 

 felt; and hence these stages are incomplete, particularistic, and 

 incumbered with alien matter. As development progresses they 

 become more and more pure and spiritual, until they reach their 

 culminating point in Christianity. God is then revealed and recog- 

 nized as the absolute and immanent Spirit. According to this view, 

 the history of the formation and development of Christian dogma is 

 the real history of the Christian religion; and the most important 

 elements, too, in dogma are the speculative assertions, especially those 

 on the nature of the Trinity and on Christology ; for in them the pure, 

 pantheistic knowledge of God comes to expression, in part clearly and 

 plainly, in part only lightly veiled. In this way the history of philo- 

 sophy and the history of higher, especially of the Christian, religion, 

 are, rightly understood, identical; nay, in their identity we get not 

 only the true history of the human spirit but also the history of God 

 Himself: in this history the Absolute Spirit "has come to itself." 



This magnificent conception of the history of the church is not, 

 indeed, without some value; but, for all that, it cannot be accepted. 

 That the knowledge of God as the Absolute Spirit forms a main 

 element in the Christian religion is true. On the other hand, since 

 the aim of philosophy is to get at the ultimate reasons for everything, 

 and these are not to be found in anything material, an elective affinity 

 is thereby established between philosophy and spiritual religion. 

 Moreover, the higher forms of religion have at all times made use of 

 philosophical thought in order to justify the idea of God and give it 

 a fuller development; and, conversely, philosophy has taken account 

 of the ideas expressive of religious and more particularly of Christian 

 faith. But these circumstances must not blind us to the fact that 

 religion and a philosophical theory of the world, so long as the latter 

 keeps to its own ground, are two different things. Religion is a definite 

 state of feeling and will, basing itself on inner experience and on 

 historical facts. This it remains even in its higher stages; and hence 

 the intellectual element in it, although an absolutely necessary ele- 

 ment, always takes the second place. Again, religion is never "dis- 

 interested," as any theory must be; on the contrary, it has to do 

 with hopes and aspirations; nay, we may even say that religion is the 

 instinct of self-preservation in a higher form an instinct, however, 

 which in the Christian religion is not concerned with the empirical 

 Ego and with earthly life, but with the inmost core of this Ego, 

 which in another world, the world of Freedom and the Good, sees its 



